Over the course of the year, our news team has been assembling executive roundtables across a range of different industries.

We invite roughly a dozen area executives in select sectors to lunch, and take a plunge into what’s making news in their world.

Our goal is greater understanding and market intelligence, as well as specific story ideas and coverage direction.

These days, technology is more than a business beat. It impacts all sectors, and in Tampa Bay, it is all over the map from defense, product design and software to cyber-security and the B2B distribution of electronics.

What follows is the complete discussion, which Alexis Muellner moderated.

Alexis Muellner/TBBJ: Let’s start by going around the room to each panelist. Please tell is briefly about something you're working on right now, and something you're excited about in the future?

Tony DiBenedetto: We’re a national company focused on helping our customers implement technology. We just purchased a company called Intelladon. They are the largest implementers of courses on demand.

This week I'm flying to meet with Adam Miller who is the CEO of Cornerstone [On Demand Inc.] We're going to talk about how to leverage the relationship with this new partner. We are the largest Microsoft Dynamics partner in the world, headquartered here in Tampa which is kind of funny because people don’t think of this as a big market.

We’ve won their global partner of the year for the past six years. We’re hoping to do the same thing for Adam in the Cornerstone space. If you think about what that space is, it’s all about taking performance management and learning to another level and automating that part of the business. So I’m exited about that new relationship.

Alexis: How many people work in your office now?

DiBenedetto: About 600

Alexis: Heather?

Heather Kenyon: Two of the founders of TBTF are here, so I’m excited about that. Kurt, one of my favorite people, and Tony.

Something I’m excited about and working on right now, I think it’s the continual fight and continual effort to bring attention to the fact that we don’t have enough high skilled IT workers and we're working on that very aggressively, and we have some very exciting things we can't talk about.

We’re just pushing the recommendations on that. We’re doing lots of stuff, like putting student chapters on campuses; we're doing veterans job fairs to help get more veterans employed. That’s also an effort to bring focus to the fact that we work more effectively with our institutions, educational institutions and we also need to have more interns in our local organizations.

We've been working with Tech Data to help with some of that and encourage local companies to take on interns. We're doing a great effort with Tony’s company, where FSU (Florida State University) is going to come to town and we’re going to figure out how to work more effectively with FSU. He recruits heavily from there, more of our local companies should do that.

Rob Brady: We've got about five buildings in Sarasota, 60 people, been around 20 plus years. We’re a real physical company. We do the digital side as we need to. What's kind of unique and different about our studio is we’re a product development firm. We literally physically build the products. We’ve designed a lot of the water vehicles that you may have ridden on, the Yamaha and Polaris and power sports type products. But we also do medical and energy products.

Basically the model is humanizing technology. And so when you talk about your iPhone and how great it is to use, that's because someone and a whole team spent an incredible amount of time creating the physical device but also to make the operator user interface to be more intuitive, and those are the types of things we're doing in Sarasota.

This week we are just crazy for a couple of programs. We’re launching a new electric vehicle in Milan in November, and backing the calendar down, that thing has to ship next month. So we’re working around the clock on that. We’ve got a partnership with a little German manufacturer called Daimler [laughter] on an electric vehicle. At the same time we're doing medical startups and supporting a lot of other initiatives. We have one of the startups is a female health care company and we’re signing on a very substantial distributor this week. We’re all over the place disrupting as much as we possibly can.

Tonya Elmore: Happy to be here. Kurt Long is one of my founding board members and Rob currently sits on our board, and we’ve been helping the program [at the Innovation Center] develop for 10 years now.

We work with early stage technology companies throughout the region.

One thing that I'm working on this week is an overall economic impact study. So far we have 400 jobs we can count that we worked with last year and those companies made about $64 million in revenue and 20 products that spun out. So overall hopefully this study does well in the end and I think that comprises about 35-plus companies and that does not include all the other companies we've touched throughout the region with our various programs and services in house.

The thing that I’m excited about is the launching of a program in the city of Tampa around disruptive health care innovation. That’s tied into the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp. and USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation. We’re also launching a program in St. Petersburg around bio-innovation and media technologies. We're getting the final results from the consultant within the next 15-30 days and hopefully will be able to marry the two across the bridge so they compliment each other.

Julian Waits: What we’re all about is making everyone in this room feel confident and safe while using the Internet. We build security technology. Primarily starting in antivirus space moving very quickly into new space called advanced persistent threats. For those of us that don’t understand that zero based stuff, meaning stuff that no ones has ever seen before and affects all of us in targeted attacks, which are designed by very sophisticated actors that want to steal your stuff, as discussed by our president in his last address to the nation. We’re a $42 million company. We spun out of GFI software in March, 330 employees, growing very rapidly. What I’m focusing on today is raising the funding and signing the lease for the D.C. office, and my vacation is in two weeks.

Bob Dutkowsky: We're probably the biggest company that no one really knows about. To give you a feeling of our business, we sell $100 million in technology products a day. We have the privilege to work with 400 to 500 of the largest IT vendors in the world. So we're in the unique position in that we really have our finger on the pulse of what is happening in the tech space.

What I'm working on today, right before I came here we found out we won a $30 million account from a prospect we've been working in for awhile. So I was patting the sales team on the back who had done a marvelous job. If you can imagine the poor salesperson on the other side, because we took it right out of the hives of our competitors, he has to tell his boss that they just lost a $30 million deal to Tech Data.

And then what’s the next great thing?

I mean when you look at the pipeline of things that are coming. Whether it is wearable technology or computing infrastructure that’s faster and safer and cooler and less power, or just the idea that everyone is walking around with a computer in his or her hand today.

That’s all going to be taken to another level and some of the biggest spenders in the world are spending billions of dollars trying to figure that out and we get to see some of that and we see some of the things that are going to be coming. It’s going to be exciting for the next couple of years. Some things that we never really thought we wanted, these companies will convince us we all want them.

Alexis: Joy, you’ve started 17 companies and 13 of them have been startups and you have raised a lot of money. Tell us about who you are and what you are doing.

Joy Randels: New market Partners is a startup advisory firm, but we hold several other companies. We have an investment fund that we invest in startup tech companies. We also have a firm, Applied G2, which Julian mentioned what they do, we talked about forensics and computer fraud investigation instant response. We hunt down the bad guys, provide witness testimony and those types of things. A couple of other companies, one in the judicial media space and another one I can't really disclose right now that we're launching is sort of in stealth mode.

Right now I’m pretty excited we’ve got a lot of things going on. I'm on the board of a nonprofit here locally that does Bar Camp and Ignite Tampa Bay. Bar Camp is coming up next month Sept. 28.

Lastly, I’m pretty psyched, we’re launching Startup Grind a chapter in Tampa, which will give national and international exposure to the startups that are in the community. I've been working with Derek Anderson out of Silicon Valley and that will be starting at the end of September.

Alexis: Is there anything new with Bar Camp?

Joy: This year we're doing a broader reach. So instead of it just being Bar Camp and Code Camp, where it was primarily Microsoft and the Bar Camp Group. This year we're reaching out to the broader community. So it will be all sorts of technology for people that are technologists in the room, a lot of open source. Red Hat is actually one of our sponsors this year. So we’re doing quite a few things cast a broader net in the community but really focusing on the practitioners and the startup community.

Alexis: This is the un-conference conference. You don't have a plan until you show up on Saturday morning, correct?

Joy: That’s right, so anyone who wants to show up and speak is welcome to do so and we’d love to have everybody in town. It’s completely free.

Mark Sharpe: I’m from the government and I’m here to help. That’s the most efficient thing the government has done in a long time.

Alexis: Well beyond that, I know that you have a coffee event you have with a lot of the startup community and tech folks. You've been very vocal about trying to change the makeup of industries in this community.

Mark: Well listen to Tech Data speak about what's going to occur. Our objective and goal is to have it happen here or a part of it happen here. I think that the opportunity for Tampa Bay which has been known as a great place to live, perhaps retire, homebuilding, service industry, but we’d like to have more tech jobs.

I’ve been working with Joy and others, Heather, trying to understand the industry and truly see if the government could help. What we're working on now, tomorrow the economic development innovation initiative, which we got board approval for several months back, a $2 [million] to $3 million fund and tomorrow we're going to meet for the first time. The advisory committee will meet and begin handing out some money from applicants who are looking for assistance, small amounts, less that $15,000. It’s for ideas and concepts on how to promote tech otherwise. HART (Hillsborough Area Regional Transit) today announced a one-bus-away application it only took them four or five years. I’ve been pushing these guys forever. We have an app, which is pretty cool. And then of course I’m always working on transportation.

Alexis: Well, it all falls under the broader umbrella of economic development. Kurt?

Kurt Long: Fair warning’s mission is to bring trust to the world of electronic health records. And that’s a nicer way of saying we invented software and hold patents on software that catches bad actors using their access to electronic health information within care providers, doing bad things. That's everything from snooping on their neighbors’ records to looking at celebrities’ records, to literally conducting medical identity theft or other kinds of fraudulent activities.

We have customers that represent about 1,300 hospitals, and 4,000 clinics around the world.

We've gone though a lot of growth and I expect that growth to continue. It’s an exciting time for us. But the part that is more broadly interesting to the room is probably something I'm equally as proud of. I’m co-founder of something called Next Generation Entrepreneurs with the Pinellas Education Foundation. The program was designed by us, myself, Fair Warning and the PEF, to serve a very specific niche and that niche is teaching high school students and some day and middle school students about creating companies, about being founding members of management teams. For us, all of us, we've all worked for companies and every one of them had a founder. And while PEF had done an amazing job with Enterprise Village, they were missing a key element of job creation. So maybe [that will happen] after two years of negotiation, of us insisting that entrepreneurship is curriculum worthy of being taught to high school students to inspire, teach competencies as well as give a global perspective.

We agreed and we’re now in the second year and Fair Warning is funding the winner of the program each year to start their own business and no, we do not give high school students a blank check for many thousands of dollars, but in fact do write checks for these businesses as they start for the founder having reached specific milestones.

We're just so proud of the gentlemen who won. His name is Joe Sleppy, with No Excuse Fitness. That’s literally bringing fitness solutions to disabled and other parties that would otherwise be unable to seek fitness. And we’re excited to be Joe’s partner in that business. And that’s more broadly what I’m excited about.

Alexis: What do we perceive as the biggest obstacles to growing Tampa Bay technology business in the region. Mark I thought we'd start with the government.

Mark: The government is the biggest obstacle. [laughter]

Alexis: What do you see as the obstacles to growing the community as a whole?

Mark: I would say challenges, the government. We are good at handing out money. When I first came to the county we were involved in a number of efforts to try to relocate corporate headquarters to our community, just as everyone else is trying to take our businesses and relocate them somewhere else. So what we have begun to do is to say, let’s help our local businesses. Lets shift resources to our local businesses and that's what we're trying to do. The challenge is just where do you put your money?

How do you pick a business? Is that the business of government to be selecting winners and losers? Do we work with people like Bar Camp and Health Camp and Code Camp and all the other camps or perhaps an incubator or an accelerator or some variant of that? So we're just trying to really to learn right now. Which is one reason why I’m here.

But I would just say the challenge is just kind of knowing who the players are and the actors are.

Alexis: So a gathering like this helps in many ways. Tony you have any thoughts?

Tony: Well I’d point to three broad things and I don’t think people would disagree with, there’s a lack of real capital four startup technology firms. I know that Kurt and I have been working on that for 20 years in different ways. Real capital. It’s good to hear that there's capital available with the government, but I’m talking about angel investing, early stage VC [venture capital] funding. There’s almost reluctance here from people who have made their money in other industries – to invest in technology.

A lot of the older school, and I don't mean age-wise, the older school folks that have that kind of wealth, tend to invest it in things that are nontechnology based. And so, it’s great to see Alex Sink and others, who are doing things to tie that gap, with their Florida Next program. But others are working on that as well. So I think that's one thing.

Two, is the brand of Florida in particular. I think this is partly a government thing, but unrelated, it is just not about technology. And so there’s people in other places like Austin, Boston, and Silicon Valley that almost either laugh or don’t think of us when they think of funding or talent or collaboration.

So that's a challenge for us.

I’ve sat through a lot of EDC meetings where each county, each municipality, is almost spending their own money to brand the area, and it doesn’t seem to be any coordinated effort. I’ve literally, ad nauseam, have had these conversations for many years. I don’t think that’s changed at all. I’m disappointed in that.

The third piece, probably for all of us, the big employers and the smallest, is just retaining talented young and middle career folks here in the area. I could say a lot on those three topics.

Rob: I was going to add into that. Ditto. I’m a very small company and you’re a much larger company, and yet we have the same issues of trying to find the talent, keep the talent. Younger people. I’m having to do focused efforts on some of my younger employees who have come here because of the work that we’re doing. They love the work, and we try to get them better connected to the community. That’s realizing that they don’t have to go to he Boston, Austin, Silicon Valleys to make a difference in the tech industry.

Alexis: So talent is clearly key. Bob do you have a thought?

Bob: I’ll just give you one pragmatic point. You’ve seen our president resign a couple of weeks ago. We're out recruiting a new president and as you may suspect my phone has rung off the hook with candidates who are interested in the job, but the one question they invariably ask is, “and if it doesn’t work, what else is in Tampa?” Because if you become president of somebody in Silicon Valley and you don't make it, you walk across the street and you have just as equal or maybe a better job. And what else is in Tampa? And I had to stop and think, and just listen around the room. There are lots of things in Tampa. That kind of person could add a ton of value if it didn't work.

Tony: Let me get back to the brand for a second, we don't promote the region or the state very well on this tech topic, which is why the guy asked the question.

Bob: And in a place like Austin, or the Valley, they have very active, outreaching environment, to make that never an issue. “Don't worry you come here you're going to be fine.” And we have to work doubly hard but I think we can solve that.

Julian: I slightly disagree with that. I'm an outsider, right, I moved here from Washington D.C. three years ago. There isn't a lot of talent here. We got to do a better job with education. I mean most of the tech centers in the nation, San Francisco being number one, Boston number two, Washington D.C. being number three, Austin then Boulder, all started with a large tech infrastructure.

Whether it be Hewlett Packard, Texas Instruments, tons of companies with lots of people who get tired after awhile, and then there's access to capital, which is when the VC's come in and then businesses start.

Our issue is, if you want to grow it organically because I know we share in this issue, is, first of all, I’m on Clearwater Beach. People show up to work 9:30 in the morning and they want to leave at 4:30 in the afternoon. In Washington D.C. they’d fire the whole office. Don’t ever put a company where you can see a beach [laughter]. No offense Bob, a lot of them come from you. No they do. That's the issue.

Bob: We train them to work over there.

Julian: I’m being honest with you. Half our marketing department is from Tech Data, and so, the issue...

Bob: That’s why they’re not with us anymore [laughter].

Julian: Like, this week I'm meeting with [Florida Southern College], mainly three computer science departments to try and create cyber centers of excellence. The reason I open them all in the Washington D.C. office is that if I want cyber expertise I’ve got to go to D.C. or I’ve got to go to Boston. I’m not going to find it here.

When I talk to my investors about what can we do better, cause quite frankly the most advantageous thing here is that employees in Florida cost a lot less money than they do in Washington D.C. or Boston. Who wouldn't want to do that? Especially for a company like ours that operates globally, but I told them unless we try and build it ourselves it will never happen. So that’s what we’ve started to do.

Alexis: I am interested in the solution. Joy I know you had some thoughts about this too.

Joy: Actually I agree with Tony’s point specifically, like all the points were good but on the marketing, dead on. We do a terrible job here from a marketing perspective – marketing what actually exists in our community or why anyone would want to come here. We market real estate, and tourism, but we really don't market anything else. And that’s just a fact. I kind of disagree with Julian, I agree with most of his points, but I hire really talented cyber security people here and I don’t really have a problem with that.

Julian: Yeah, but give me 50 of them at one time.

Joy: Oh, I wouldn't.

[Laughter]

The other side of it is we don't have on the education standpoint. There is a big key there which is one of the reasons I think what Kurt is doing is so awesome starting much earlier with education.

I think the other thing we don't do here, and I don’t want to knock any particular university or anything like that, but we don't teach the current skill set that’s required to work in a technical startup in our universities. And that’s just a fact.

Chris Wilkerson/TBBJ: And what is that skill set?

Joy: We don’t look at the appropriate developmental languages. We don’t teach security architecture, to Julian’s point. If we look at what we have, we have a strong set here. If you look around at the businesses here that have survived and have made really good money, and the people in this room can attest to that, many are enterprise level software companies.

It's not the next iPhone. They have longevity. People pay real money for that. And if we’re educating, we're doing things to build up our community, we should focus on those types of curriculum. That versus the newest coolest toy that's come out that's going to fade away. I’m not negating that people aren’t going to buy iPhone apps, but the reality is you’re not going to have a tinier growth span for a company that's doing that.

Alexis: So build around a foundation of earlier education.

Joy: Earlier education and our university system. We need to change the curriculum in our university system here.

Tony: To Joy’s point, I would say I’m working with [University of Florida], [Florida State University], University of Tampa, [University of South Florida]. They're listening, and actually they’re thirsty for content. If you work with them, they would do it. They’ll take time, but we started our program three years ago and we’re cherry-picking kids now, I haven’t hired the thousands that Bob would need, but I hired 50 kids in the last year from Florida and Florida State. It’s because we gave them the software. We teach at the schools, but you have to invest in these schools. You can get what you want. You can get 50 kids. It will be a year from now, but you’ve got to give them the content. You have got to spend the time teaching and I think you’ll get what you want.

So I think our timing is right and I don’t think the universities are cocky on this topic at all. They want it. We're just not talking to them.

Heather and I cosponsored a thing for Florida State to come down here to connect with the CEOs to get that feedback. Because I'm like, “nobody in Tampa knows Florida State.”

We know them for their football, but we don't know them for their business school, but we don't know them for their tech school. And if you want to have an impact here locally, work with the CEOs, they’ll tell you want they want. They’re coming on Sept 17. I will send an invite to you guys; you’re all invited to come talk with them on this exact topic.

Rob: Could I add on to that? Because I think what you’re both talking about is part of the issue. In Sarasota we have a great college called Ringling School of Art and Design and it is one of the top premier digital animation schools, they have many schools within and that's one of them. But it is literally taking 10 to 15 percent of the applicants. As Harvard is to law, they are to this digital animation and so to your point – you want to get the colleges to do a great job at teaching the young people, which is the A part.

The B part is what's going to keep them from leaving with their diploma. And that's a problem we have in Sarasota. We almost had a digital animation company come there. Had it come there it would have been the beginning of the anchor.

Mark: College seems important, but everyone I talk with says you have to start much earlier and you’ve got the school district working with MOSI on a STEM initiative here locally, in the high schools getting ready to do some work based on the gap analysis that has been done in Hillsborough and Pinellas. In fact we're meeting this afternoon, I’m meeting with the [Tampa Bay Partnership] to talk about how we can start them earlier. I'm interested in what we can do even earlier to get kids interested in tech. I’m also interested in, when we look at anchor companies and the types of companies we want to attract, so that if someone comes here and says, okay, this doesn’t work but there’s another company right next door [that might], should we be looking at the big company or lots of small ones?

Group: Yes. [laughter]

Julian: While I certainly want more kids interested in tech, I think the first issue is more generational.

When we all were kids our mom and dad taught us that, grow up, get a degree and get a good job.Unfortunately our education system hasn't caught up with the times. The education system is still designed around go get a good job. It’s not to create a bunch of jobs. So I think the first thing we have to do is educate kids that they should be business owners rather than just operate in a business.

The second thing, let’s see how many of them actually have the proclivity for doing tech. And not all of them will.

Joy: That’s so true because if you look at where the economy is going, entrepreneurship is the future. So we [need to] teach that and support that. The other problem we have here is two things. Rob your point, in Sarasota one of the problems we have is affordable housing. Housing prices are out of control. So somebody can't come find and apartment and those kinds of things and every time someone comes up with an idea, and they say they want to build something down there and people go ballistic and say “no I don’t want an 800-Square-foot apartment in downtown, what's wrong with you people?”

It’s because you want to create something that is generational because we want something besides snowbirds to live in the community. That’s important for the overall community.

Heather: We actually did a study. So along with the Hillsborough Pinellas high tech corridor, we all did a study. We specifically identified 4,000 positions that couldn't be filled and we very specifically identified what those were and we had shared that with universities and they know.

As he said, the problem with university system is that it really needs to be brought up to code or modernized because right now it takes 18 months to get a curriculum approved. You can’t do that and keep up with the pace of technology.

Tony: I think it depends on your commitment. At FSU we literally gave them some Microsoft software. We said listen “don't spend any money, we'll give you the software, we’ll host it in our cloud for free, but we want to teach this exact thing. We will guarantee you jobs at the end. Let us guest lecture in the classes” and they did that in a couple of months. So I think you can do it, but you’ve got to be committed. We took 50 kids. That doesn't sound like a lot but it actually is a lot in a short amount of time, for a university. I do think security architecture in particular – if that’s the topic – is way behind.

Julian: In the D.C. metropolitan area there’s now at least five or six universities that offer an undergraduate in computer science with an emphasis on cyber security.

Heather: I suggest you [widen your base.]I don’t think you’re looking enough. Because we've had other folks who have no issues with their security folks because the ...

Julian: No it’s not an issues, so… one set of my products, the office of the president is one of them. The skill sets are highly focused and unless you worked in kind of a DOD intelligence infrastructure, yeah, I mean you got to go to people like Lockheed.

[people talking over each other]

Julian: You don’t have to have a [clearance], but you just have to have the experience. It’s very specified. So if you're in Boston or D.C. right now, even in the insurance industry, large companies have to have cyber insurance. It’s about to become the law. So insurance companies are even feeding these universities with more money to get more people with this expertise and it just doesn't hit here yet.

Bridgette Bello/TBBJ: I was going to say one of the things that I’m most bothered by in this conversation is that no one has mentioned St. Petersburg College. As somebody that they talked to or somebody that's been approached and that's bothersome.

Kurt: Dr. [Shri] Goyal, we’ve worked with for a really long time and he has been a judge on Next Generation Entrepreneur. They had a security group that was kind of nurturing that segment and then when Dr. Goyal left I lost track of it. We’ve hired people from it that produced good graduates.

Heather: And they’ve been very innovative and actually put in a cyber, an IT curriculum based off results that came from our study. So I would say they are extraordinarily innovative. We’re talking more. I don’t think that’s the problem. I think the community colleges do an excellent job. It’s more the statewide universities that I would challenge to be a little bit more nimble, like St. Pete College.

Joy: One of the challenges is, if you look at universities, I’m a coach for Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s entrepreneurship development program and I work with the MIT venture forum and what MIT does really well is their TLO, their technology license office, is phenomenal.

Basically 80 percent of all the technology licenses out of MIT are done on a two-page form. The other 20 percent is one often. Here, I’ll use USF as an example. It’s an arduous process at best. To license something coming out, no matter how minute it is. If we are really generating patents worthwhile out of USF, then why not automate that process and get more tech entrepreneurs that want to license that technology and come here and build their businesses.

So I would say change that, and we’ve had meetings about it. Mark did a Tech Talk out there and we brought that up and they were like “no we have that all under control.” And you really don't because you license maybe two things a year out of the TLO. And that's really not a good number.

Julian: Do they have a tech transfer program?

Joy: That’s what I'm saying.

Tonya: They actually don't even take that technology and do it locally. They take it out to the highest bidder. Technology is going to Atlanta because it went to the highest bidder so they're in the business of having funding coming in through that office it's not really about creating jobs. It’s about making money off of the technology but I also would like this group to think a little outside of Florida and the [United States]. I mean we’re in a global economy and I will tell you countries like Chile and Ireland are actually throwing money at startup companies to come in, to locate there. They’re offering them one year visas and they’re very creative about getting the best and the brightest. I think not just Florida, but the entire United States has taken a back seat to that.

Joy: She's right. At MIT in the EDP program, they actually sponsor the governments from Ireland, from Brazil and Dubai, sponsor their people to go there. I met three young guys who are working out of Dubai for fund that was there. Basically if you wanted to come to Dubai, if I were to bring my startup to Dubai and agree to stay there for a period of three years, they would give me a million dollars.

Alexis: Bob, being the biggest public company in the region, how much focus is there for you on skills training and development. Is that something you guys are talking about at an executive level?

Bob: Yeah, we invest a lot of time and energy first recruiting people and then skilling them up to the dynamics of the business. So if you think about the transition our company has gone through, we made our mark selling PCs. Well look what's happened to that market, we now have transitioned out people on to selling servers and storage and networking and high end software products. Some of the people make the cut and some don’t, but we invest a tremendous amount of energy in trying to skill people up all the time.

Julian: I agree with it, we have the same issues. When I assumed the business in March, most of the managers, people who were managers that worked in the businesses, had to move from another department, had never done the job they were doing before. The place they struggled the most wasn’t in their actual discipline, it was just in management. Now, every employee has to take finance for managers and we’re trying to cut a deal with a couple of universities so they have a choice, but everyone who becomes a manager has to go through management training.

Heather: If you want to see a model for training people, look at this guy right here. Tribridge has an amazing model for training up kids right out of college who can step in immediately. They invest a lot of money to do that.

Tony: I used to work at Arthur Andersen. They had it down because they actually didn't hire, they didn’t care about the technology. They hired art majors and turned them into programmers. So you could make an argument that we're really having the wrong discussion because we're talking about specific skills versus character.

The big thing for all of us is investing back. You’re expecting universities or everyone else to do all the work and it’s not going to happen. If you can collaborate with multiple companies, unless you’re Tech Data [laughter], but the rest of us, we’re pretty small. We need to have some maps to go to universities with to have a story.

So you and Kurt and others that are in the security world should go to the universities together, be more collaborative and say, “look, we’re going to hire 200 people over five years, this is why this is important to you” the university.

Alexis: It brings up a really good point. One of the things that has been a focus of ours is find out where there can be cohesion in tech and not backstabbing and back fighting. Over my time here, I’ve been amazed at how disparate things can be in the local tech scene. But I’m noticing a lot more synergy recently. On this whole notion of giving back and being committed to it, how do you find a balance between doing that and running a profitable business?

Kurt: You accept it. I chose to live here. The natural thing for me to do would be to have left. I grew up in Florida, I was inspired by the Space Program. I worked at the space center and I found myself here and I love where I live. I love everything about Florida, I just do.

So to stay here though you have to – and this is just practically speaking it doesn't mean we can't make things change or be better, and by the way it starts with how we think of ourselves and how we brand ourselves to the outside world – but you kind of have to accept that. And here's the good news: You can find good people and they usually want to work for you because there's not a lot of choices. So the bad news is there's not as many great talented software product managers, software developers, high-end architects, there’s not as many out there. But when you can find them, if you have a compelling story you're kind of going ok, where else are you going to work bedsides here for that, so you're in a pretty good shape.

So that's the good and the bad. You have to accept that you're going to work really hard to hire from the outside from time to time, from out of state. But I’m going to build these young people and its going to take a year longer but the clock starts now and you just accept that you’re going to build them. Then as part of that, you say you can still make things better for this company and for things to come and it starts with acceptance.

But the benefit is an awesome place to live and a great place to build a business. You have to be a little more creative.

Alexis: I guess the question is why are you here? Why do business here?

Kurt: Great universities that are underrepresented. I wish they could work together a little more closely and not argue with each other. That would be a welcome relief, but great universities.

Julian: I was given the option of moving headquarters [out of Tampa Bay] and I decided not to do it because it does have good infrastructure. It's a great place for people to work and Florida – it’s much more than a place to have a job – it represents a lifestyle.So to the point you brought up earlier about culture, I don’t want to disrupt the people being comfortable, and being in a place people like to be at the same time, I try to instill that in our culture. So my decision was to stay here. It’s a necessary component to what I'm doing. I’m trying to sign a lease on a space now for ten years. I want to be here for a while. I’ve got to build up the infrastructure so I have more to work with as time moves forward.

Kurt: As a long time Floridian, and I'm probably skewed and out of touch because I've been here for so long. But when people say ‘lifestyle’ about Florida, and all I’ve done my whole life for the last 30 years is fly to Boston and Austin and Silicon Valley. And when they hear “lifestyle”they think of us sitting on the beach and I quite frankly don't see that. That’s not the lifestyle that I, nor my company lead.

We instill the control to be competitive on a world class basis where we expect and demand the most out of every professional that steps in our doors each day and so that’s part of the lifestyle and is it true that we can go offshore fishing anytime, yeah that's part of it, it is. Unfortunately we've defined the single most component of our lifestyle is the beach and I think its unfortunate because I see it as so much more. It's so much more rewarding than just sitting on the beach.

Julian: I agree with what you said, unfortunately I took over a company that isn't on the beach.

Tony: I thought you were asking about why would you give back, and Kurt went down a different angle, which is great, but I have a thought on what to say. For one, I think it’s one big system. So when I think of it, mostly because I’m an IT guy and have an IT degree, for me it’s all this organic system. So whether you work or play or live or whatever its all one big community. So I think a lot of the reason a lot of us give back is we’re trying to build up the health of this organic system. It’s maybe a little to technical.

Alexis: The ecosystem analogy has been used all the time.

Tony: It’s true. It’s not just pretend because people don't just work eight hours a day and punch a clock. We’re in a completely work environment. So our work and our play is all mixed and we want to love this place and here’s the unique thing that we have not talked about. Even though we’re a large state we’re an immature state from a business community standpoint for the most part I would say. There is an opportunity to build it. So the reason I’m jazzed about it is, I’m nobody. I went to a state school. I have this little tiny company, yet I’m impacting the way that Tampa Bay works and the region works. You don't go to New York and change the way that New York is. Florida is still undefined. So the opportunity for all of us is to create it, you can't create the other communities. We can create this one. That’s why I give back – because I can actually have an impact, because I am an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs want to put a stamp on it and to me that's why people are excited about this era. We're starting to create it. Now is it going awfully slow? Hell yeah. I’ve been saying that for 25 years, it’s going slow.

Alexis: Is there more that can be done together? Mark you have a thought?

Mark: I just want to follow-up on your question. My wife is an instructor, she teaches at Plant High School but also training with teachers all over the country, so she travels all summer long. It’s fascinating when I ask her, what do teachers think about Tampa, Florida? She’s been to Detroit, she’s been to Las Vegas a couple of times, and on the east and west coasts, there is a sense it is more laid back.

I think there’s just this kind of complacency. Maybe not in this room, not in this room here, but in the community and the elected officials there's a sense that things are well enough and it drives me crazy. So I wonder, do we have within our community DNA to be an Austin, to be a, forget trying to be San Francisco or New York, but could we be an Austin? Could we be a Denver? Could we be the type of community that is considered a top ten community for startups, for business development, or will we always be some middling community?

Alexis: Bob, and then Joy.

Bob: A couple thoughts. First, I came here from Boston seven years ago and a search firm called me up and said would you consider leaving Boston and my wife and I had moved 15 times – everywhere from Boston to Tokyo and all points in between. I said to my wife before we even get into this conversation, if I said Tampa what would you do? And she ran over and got her suitcase out of the closet and said we’re out of here.

This is an attractive place to live. Forget the businesses environment. Just the attractiveness of this environment and those of you who have been here forever maybe lost track of that. My wife and I still pinch ourselves every morning when we wake up. This is a beautiful place to live and conduct business.

Second thing is the last three people we’ve lost to Silicon Valley based companies were allowed to stay in Tampa and continue to work. The thing that we’re missing here is the lifestyle that many of these other places can't offer. If we could find a way to leverage what we have as opposed as apologizing for it, I think it's a huge opportunity.

Julian: That was the point I was making earlier, I didn’t state it that articulately. I just recruited a new CFO from D.C. and the first thing he said his wife said was, I can't wait to get away from the winter. So there is a lifestyle that people would like to have here that they deserve to have.

Bob: But the whole motion could be playing into our hands because people don't need to show up at the office anymore to do their job. So if you have to have the rest of your life aside from work, why not have it in Tampa versus in Chicago or Washington or someplace? And by the way I’ve lived in all those towns, and they're great but they're not as good as this, because that don't have that other piece of it. They’re all on par with that, but they don't have this.

Alexis: So we talked about potentially branding as a cohesive group, that’s certainly one area to consider. Maybe that begins here. Joy did you have a remark?

Joy: I made a decision to move here in 2000. I’ve worked in Boston, I've worked in Silicon Valley, I’ve worked in New York, I’ve worked in Europe, I’ve worked in Asia. We can just keep going. I can't even count the millions of miles. Deltaloves me. I've been to all these places and I get what it's like. I've done turnarounds for companies in Austin. I made a conscious decision to live here, because I wanted to live here. I still want to live here.

I could easily move somewhere else if I made the decision to do so. But I agree that we have a lot more here to offer. And it kind of annoys me to hear people say, oh it's a better lifestyle in Seattle, or it's a better lifestyle in Silicon Valley. I guess it just depends on your point of view.

So if I wanted to go snow skiing everyday, you're right I would be better to live in Seattle. If I liked rain, it'd be better to live in Seattle. There are all those things, but if I look at all the things that allow me as an entrepreneur to do well, I look at, that it is relatively easy for me to get people to move here form another location. Velocitude, which we sold to Akamai,I recruited – we found a lot of people here but I recruited three or four guys as developers because I needed very specific skill sets that I could not find locally. We also paid them well, which people need to change their mindset here because you're not going to get the top notch guy for $80,000 a year, because that's not what happens.

And one part of the reasons, to your point about people living here, it's much better to live in Florida on $150,000 salary than it is to try live in Chicago or Silicon Valley on $150,000 a year. You get a completely difference lifestyle. And as a business owner I like the taxation. I like what I have as business owner.

Entrepreneurship isn’t easy. It’s hard. I've known Kurt through three companies. It’s hard work. If you’re signing up for the program thinking it’s going to be easy, you’re just kidding yourself. It’s hard work but you got to really want to do it. If you believe in what you're doing, I’d say you can do it anywhere and my choice was to do it here.

Alexis: How might we market what we are here? What’s the “there” here? We had the Medifuture Conference in may in Tampa which was focused on disruptive innovation in health care. I think there is so much kind of different kind of great entrepreneurialism. How important is it to have a definition, and is that branding quality what we need to do or is it just that this is a place that has great entrepreneurial spirit?

Heather: So I've been traveling quite a bit just because what I’m trying to benchmark what my organization is doing against others, so I've been to Nashville, Northern Virginia, they’re the mac-daddy of all technology councils. They have more than 1,000 technology companies as members. They have Bill Gates come and talk. So that’s' the mac-daddy. For example in Nashville, the [Tampa] Chamber is going there for a benchmarking trip, we went there and I met with them. Their entrepreneurship center is incredible. Gleaming glass. They have really embraced that, but they have an identity.

When everyone thinks of Nashville, they think of music, it's the first thing they think of. They're innovative, you got young people coming, music people, technology minded folks andthose that have that kind of aptitude – their brain works in the same way. So they have a leg up I think in that regard.

When people think of this region, when the National Republican Convention came to town, what did everybody think when they were coming here?They didn't have any concept. It was hot, and that's the concept they have.

I think from a marketing perspective, how we market this area is so important and that if we could do anything to have a more business and technology [focused-branding] that would be really beneficial for everybody.

Alexis: Any thoughts on that front?

Julian: You have to have a brand. A matter of fact I’ve been a graduate of a program they had before I was a CEO called Mindshare, which has nine months of CEO boot camp. Once a month, you show up on Thursday night. The first night might be create a marketing plan, the next month might be how do you go to VCs to ask for money. I can’t remember all of the details – it was a 2005 class. But every year I still have to give back to that program in terms of mentorship efforts I provide to other potential CEOs that are going through the program. But Northern Virginia has created a brand for itself. To the point you made about counties, Virginia gives so much money for Spain, I can't tell you the number of countries that funnel money into the universities, not the just in Virginia but the D.C. tech council that gets to ride the wake. It’s not exactly but, they get all the same benefits out of there.

Tony: Alexis, to answer your question really quick, I don’t think it can be or should be so specific that you ride the camel back or you ride a specific technology distribution or whatever, its way too narrow and I don't think we're in any position to do it because we don't have massive anything. I think you got to put a lot of money into it and someone needs to own the brand. That's an obvious and then come up with something that allows us to build. I would build off entrepreneurialism with a tech overlay, than I would technology with an entrepreneurism overlay. That would be my preference. But I actually don't care either way pick a poison, ride the horse. But nobody is stepping up to own this.

Alexis: I was going to say, how does that happen? How do we get to that point, I mean mark you said something recently, I think I saw quoted about, in terms of “potential, 318 out 380 metros?

Mark: The lastest rating, [data on] site location for where you want to set up a business, and they looked at 380 MSAs and we were No. 315 or 320.

Kurt: Based on what criteria?

Joy: Yeah, it's always, how was this study done?

Mark: The metrics that they use was fairly elaborate. They did look at a lot of manufacturing. Manufacturing kind of determined whether MSA was considered strong or not. Our manufacturing base is considered weak and that hurt us.

Kurt: That's alright. St. Petersburg was voted like the first most depressing place to live by Men's Health, and I was going to take a picture of downtown and send it in them.

Bridgette: I would like to go back to what Bob said. I moved here six and a half years ago and one of the funniest things that I continued to hear from people when we would have conversations, the number one question I got asked is, what were your first perceptions? What do you think of the area? And what I would tell them, what they would say back goes to your point Mark, is ‘oh it’s gotten so much better.’

Everyone that is leadership here that's been here for a really long time thinks it's gotten so much more better and maybe there is a complacency with that, that we’re not continuing to try to be better. Because they think it’s gotten so much better. I caught myself after the RNC saying the same thing to people, “oh it's gotten so much better.” And then I was like, “I can't believe I just said that.”

Because there was collaboration, there was beginning of all of those different regions starting to have that conversation and sitting down in the rooms together. But what has happened since then is still nothing. We're still not marketing. We still don’t have a brand. We still haven’t decided what our identity is and its very frustrating.

Joy: I think it goes all the way up to the state though. The [Enterprise Florida] orange neck tie – I got publically chastised for that, but I don’t care.

I mean it’s absolutely absurd.

Alexis: Agreed, Bob you had a thought?

Bob: I think the branding should be all about jobs. If you’re on the outside looking in to Florida, you hear highest unemployment in the country. Why would I go there and try to start my business when I'm faced with that environment, yet everybody around the room has job opportunities open. So somehow we have to get beyond the entrepreneurial ship or the technology and say it’s about jobs.

Rob: Everybody is selling that right now. And as developers of products and what have you it’s all about different [inaudible] in the marketplace. And I’ve been hearing this whole afternoon and at lunch here about the lifestyle being different and how does that overlay with the jobs the tech and that mean opportunities and that's something that would be a different sell than you could have in Seattle and some other places.

I too have lived here for over 20 years and it is a lot better than it used to be. I don’t know what point in time you want to say, but it keeps getting better. I attribute a lot of that just to the advent of the technology that we’re all surrounded by, that we can Skype in or go to meetings with places all over the world and the moment its done at five or six or seven o'clock I can hit the beach on the way home and if you're going to work hard this is a great place to work hard and that's the brand we need to get out to the universe.

Kurt: Heather how much data do you have, like when we talk about what our brand should be, do we really know who we are? Do we have aggregate stats on what our education level is, where jobs are, do we have aggregate KPI that we could say this is where we are this is who we are and this is what we want to drive up together?

Heather: I would love to do it. I would love to do a study like that. We’ve identified where the jobs are, or what the gap in IT positions is, but we haven't necessary identified who we are. I mean have like a medical device cluster, we have a –

Kurt: I mean more numerical, instead of us saying like “hey,” security and medical, we all do this we all wave our hands around, I’m the first in line to be guilty of it, but we never really measure what we are, and then rank ourselves relative to others to begin to identify what our core strengths are that we could build upon.

Julian: Are you talking about just the tech community?

Kurt: No just in general. What we know is that this community is huge. It has a lot of smart people and some others that aren't after that I don't think we know.

Tonya: I think the Tampa Bay Partnership started down that road with that business plan right?

Joy: They didn't go deep enough.

Tonya: And they started this whole branding effort. They started down the marketing track and the branding, and then you heard Tarpon Springs and sponge docks….I think when you get all these diverse communities and the Tampa Bay partnership is what eight communities, regional, and so, to say, we're this, back to your point. Maybe we should be a lot more generic. Whatever it might be. Instead of we're health care or we're Manatees or we're sunshine or we’re beaches. So the branding exercise – though it sounds very simple it becomes a lot more political as you have communities that are misrepresented or not represented at all.

Mark: It seems to me that it’s you all, it's entrepreneurism it’s startups its. It is tech. And we’ve chased call centers, we’ve chased banking, and I’m a native, so I know some of us sound somewhat critical.

I was born here raised here, love this community, but I live here. It is frustrating when you look at the ratings, for whatever reason.

In fact having gone to the other cities, lived in Washington, lived in Denver, lived in other cities, lived in California where its supposed to be great and cool and you get there and realize, oh my gosh. Home is wonderful. I miss it. But they do a wonderful job at telling their story. We don’t do a good enough job of telling our story. It is diverse but, there is greatness in diversity, but I’m just wondering if its not this whole entrepreneurism. There’s a new book out “Startup Rising,” that talks about how startups are going to revolutionize the Middle East. Is it enough?

Alexis: Maybe that’s enough to build on. Maybe we should start some of that here.

Kurt: We need data, instead of us just making stuff up and hoping that it matches reality, which is effectively what we’re doing right?

Tony: We need money put into a fund and somebody’s got to own it or we're going to keep talking about this. There's no money to put towards it. Without money you can't advertise. Without money you can't get the data. So the data to me is very tactical thing. Whether its true or not, I’d make the data up. Who cares? This is marketing [laughter]. Michigan ten years ago hired Jeff Daniels. And he went all over the place and said what a great tech entrepreneurial center it was and blah blah blah and they just started attracting businesses left and right. Because they had a plan and a message and a superstar or whatever, an actor say it was great. I doubt anybody checked the data. But in the end of the day they had great results as a result. To me we think to hard and don't act enough.

Heather: I think at some point you do have to send a flag and say hey maybe we should look there. We have enough of a base here to prove this point.

Alexis: You all are so active and energetic, does it start here or do we go about our way and this continues to be the same?

Tony: I think you got to challenge the people that have the money. Where’s the money going to come from? Is it the governor? Where’s the money going to come from to fund this? Because without money how are you going to run the ads? I hate to be so practical, but, if there’s no money, what are we talking about?

Kurt: I'm going to go back to data again, which is, you're not going to like it. But the reality is, when you talk about the governmental funds, and Tony you're right we've done this for 20 years, and whether its Enterprise Florida or the Tampa Bay Technology Forum, the council, the partnership. The point is whoever it is at the end of the day there’s no credit given.

Let’s take software security or technology. If you can't tell a politician this is the tax base that I'm generating for you out of the jobs that I've created and you can show a clear revenue stream.

Once it goes into the fund world, where its going to get funding, the places that are going to get funding are those that can best articulate their revenue stream to the state, which today is realty and tourism.

Julian: Agreed. And just finished meeting with – and I won’t say which municipality I met with but it may be obvious, but we had this big argument. I mean I live on Clearwater beach, most of the people there, other than the people who come to visit, have gray hair. That’s just the fact of the matter. And when I sat down with them they made it very clear to me who their constituents are. We made it public, in the Business Journal and everywhere else, that we’re thinking about moving to the St. Pete Feather Sound area so there’s been a big push not just by them but by a lot of business people in the community to try and keep us there. And I’m like there are no freaking services. I can't walk to the dry cleaners. I can’t go to the grocery store. A restaurant won't stay open more than 90 days, and I got 200 people in this building.

Kurt: Come and join me in Feather Sound. Sounds like you're in a bad place. [laughter]

Alexis: Well clearly I didn't have to prep the 35 questions that I had for today. [laughter]

Bridgette: I want to wrap up the marketing conversation by saying you guys need to be more vocal I believe, to the right people. We do have a marketing organization and we do give them tons on money and they don't market us. And I have been personally vocal. I think the rest of us need to be more vocal.

Alexis: I have one quick question, I can't resist, because this has been great. Hopefully it has been useful for you all I really am grateful for your time. I know you got to get out of here. Real quick, Has the community suffered from bad actors? We've been talking internally about some coverage of how does the 'we crazy' factor in Florida and people who aren't necessarily who they should be impact the ability to attract business and develop a business. I know we've seen it in the tech world especially. Where there are people who aren’t what they say they are. Briefly, how much of an issue is this from an overall big umbrella big economic development standpoint?

Joy: I actually was in Boston dealing with a group of VC's a week ago and I had a conversation with a couple of VCs out of the Valley. What they said to me when I was speaking to this specifically because guys have summerhouses, winter houses down here, as well. Look around the table, there’s no on in this room who hasn't been screwed by some dude in Florida. That’s not good if you want us to give you money.

[inaudible]: I’ve heard that exact statement.

Joy: It's a representation in the last 48 months.

Tonya: But I also think that's all over, I don’t think its only Florida. It's not just always Florida. You tend to hear things that interests you the most, right, so you hear whatever the events going on. I hear equally crazy things coming out of everywhere. So I think what this community does opens its doors to a lot of parties no matter where you’re from. A lot of other communities are much more closed. So you don't hear those stories, because it's hard to get into those circles in Nashville and Atlanta. This community a lot people, I've been here 20 years now are from somewhere else.

Joy: I think not doing any due diligence and seeing the same people go around and take advantage of people over and over again is really bad and as a community, we have to be self-policing in that aspect.

Julian: I still think its, what we talked about a few moments ago….the first question was why there? The flip side of it is, if we don't create a brand and create some buzz around what we do somewhere and it can't just be entrepreneurs and jobs. It's got to be specific. You got to have a beachhead somewhere to build from. I lived in Houston Texas for 13 years working for BMC Software running the M&A program. So when the Austin thing first started, I lived there. It went in six months from a bunch of hills on one side of the Texas fault line and flat on the other side. We went from no employees to over hundred to several hundred. A part of what attracted people to Austin was that lifestyle.

Alexis: We really enjoy our relationships with all of you. They are critical to our success and I can’t thank you all enough for being here.